Face booked

One of those recent "zeitgeist" topics was some apparent furor about Facebook and a glitch in its privacy policies. Apparently the blogosphere was all aflutter over whatever it was, with there being a push to have everyone quit the site.

Which, obviously, did not happen.

I do think there could be improvements made to the ease of setting one's security preferences, but as one of the panelists on the most recent Slate Culture Gabfest podcast noted: It's a voluntary site. No one is forced to set up an account.

The doofus male panelist equated it to some credit card scam, but that attitude overlooks the reality of these free sites:  They're not really free. The site needs to make money somehow, and they need to make that off of you joining, sharing info about yourself, and then harnessing that to get advertisers to give them money to be able to direct their advertisements that would seem to appeal to you. Or at least that's my take on it.

I'm not an apologist for Facebook. I was amongst the last people I know to join (but it has popped up surprisingly often in posts since then). It's as annoying as it is amusing.  But I've always treated it like anything else on the web: I don't put anything up that I wouldn't want to come up if I were to run for office. (Oh, who are we kidding with that? It's really nothing I wouldn't want to be usable by the prosecution if I'm ever on trial.)

However, I will say this: If you don't like it and want to get off of it I whole-heartedly support leaving. If you feel like you were forced to join because it's what everyone else was doing, or because it seemed prudent for self-promotional purposes, or haven't logged in to the site in longer than you can remember, then by all means do delete your account.

If the media furor about the privacy controversy is your excuse for quitting, so be it, but I'd say that's not so much a protest statement as it's overcoming procrastination and finally doing something you probably should have done before.

If you held some illusion that you could join Facebook without having to pay any membership and get all of its benefits with no downside, without having to make any effort to protect what you wanted protected, and that anything posted on the web is ever completely confidential, then not only should you probably not be on Facebook but that suggests a naiveté where perhaps using the internet at all is imprudent.

And I can say that here, with no concern for exposure or maintaining privacy, because only four people read this anyway. (Go ahead, corporate America: Have at this. I dare you.)

But to the four of you: Thanks for spending some imprudent time here.